Let me be perfectly clear: we are near a variety of breaking points in our foreign policy right now. We cannot continue this go-it-largely-alone path in Iraq. Our people are burning out. When you get troops balking in numbers at orders, that’s not just a bad sign, that’s the beginning of a very ugly pathway. And there is nothing coming along that will make this situation any better any time soon. Our rotation schedule for troops in Iraq is heading for a trainwreck. We have units go back for a second time and their impressions are near universal: this situation is much worse now than when they left it.

Moreover, no one else in the Core sees a happy ending, and thus they’re not eager to come to our aid, knowing we are unwilling to pay the prices necessary to gain their help. So they promise help but send only small shares of it. At the same time, our bills pile up under the supposition that the rest of the Core will finance our ruinous budgetary situation ad infinitum, which is a dangerous belief at best….

…This whole global war on terrorism, not to mention the transformation of the Middle East, has all been cast primarily in terms of what America needs from the world in order to feel safer after 9/11. What 9/11 said to us was that the global security order was in deep bifurcation: between a world that felt secure and was moving ahead on globalization and a world that felt great insecurity and was feeling left behind on globalization.

The solution set that America must push over the next four years cannot be the same one we pushed over the last four years. Over the last four years we concentrated largely on getting our house in order and projecting that new order on the rest of the world. The next four years must be all about getting the Gap in order by enlisting the entire Core’s aid in making that happen, and that unity won’t come until we assure the rest of the Core that the new rules we’re pushing in security will not only make America more secure, but them as well.

In short, the happy ending we sell over the next four years needs to be about security elsewhere, not at home, and that message is unlikely to be delivered by a second Bush Administration, simply because they’re not genetically predisposed to those sorts of “humble” interactions, despite Bush’s promise of four years ago. Simply put, any “Marshall Plan” for the Gap will be looked upon as a bailout for those crazy, war-happy Americans at this point, and not viewed in terms of its real motivation of making globalization truly global.

Again, I credit the Bush Administration with many great decisions and actions over the past four years, but their success in moving America off the old rule set and onto a new one puts us in far different territory than we found ourselves in following 9/11. We have laid down the bulk of the necessary new rule sets in global security over the past three years, but without the buy-in from the rest of the Core over the next four years, we may end up doing more to damage globalization’s future than to secure it. For the rule set that has no widespread buy-in is not a rule set, just the proposal for one–or a rallying cry for its opposition.

So yes, it’s time for nuance. It’s time for deal-making. It’s time for splitting differences and moving the pile. It’s time for achieving progress over perfection, for compromise over certitude, for real global vision over personal belief.

It’s time for war to be put back in the context of everything else, and that’s not going to happen with a self-declared “war president.”

All you have to do after reading this post is ask yourself: Is Bush more likely to grow out of his myopic view of this war and into the direction of “everything else,” or is Kerry more likely to be forced into factoring war into his preferred definition of “everything else”?

Events tend to harden presidents, not soften them. Bush is about as hard as he can get with his certitude and his baggage, as are the major players in his administration. It’s time to reset the political rule set known as party control of the Executive Branch.

That’s why I voting for Kerry. Not because I’m a Democrat, but because that is what both America and the world really need right now.”

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